Can no longer search code without being logged in. · community · Discussion #77046
github.com
Select Topic Area Product Feedback Body This is revolting and an anathema to the open source movement. A movement, I might add, Microsoft is abusing here. We're told that this is for security... Bu...

Response from Martin Woodward, GitHub’s VP of Developer Relations:

Sorry for the inconvenience @koepnick - while searching across all repos has required being logged in for a long time, when we enhanced the search capabilities earlier in the 2023 we had to extend this to repos as well (see https://github.blog/changelog/2023-06-07-code-search-now-requires-login/).

This is primarily to ensure we can support the load for developers on GitHub and help protect the servers from being overwhelmed by anonymous requests from bots etc.

  • btp@kbin.socialOP
    305·
    11 months ago

    I think it kind of flies in the face of what Open Source Software should be. They’re walling off code behind accounts in the Microsoft ecosystem.

    • sparky@lemmy.federate.cc@lemmy.federate.cc
      121·
      11 months ago

      I think it’s kind of a slippery slope; but I don’t think the search itself being login walled is apocalyptic. As long as anonymous users can clone the repositories and browse the code, I can kind of understand why they don’t want to pay to run an elastic search cluster for bots’ benefit. Presumably in-repo search could be done locally by scrapers’ hardware.

      But if it turns into “login to view this repository” then GitHub will have turned evil.

    • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      They’re not walling off any code. They’re restricting use of their server-side search resources. Other repository hosting services don’t have code search at all.

    • phillaholic@lemm.ee
      48·
      11 months ago

      It’s more gating off than walling. If it keeps access and usage free I’m ok with it.